


The Adventure Within

by Vana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Happy Ending, No wedding to Rhaegar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 04:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12787185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana
Summary: Elia Martell and her life as a happy spinster.





	The Adventure Within

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grumkin_snark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumkin_snark/gifts).



> The prompt here was "Elia gets a happy ending." I think while Elia is realistic about her chances for a long life, she knows she can make it, long or short, a happy one.

Every morning, the hot winds of her homeland blew the cool scent of lemons into her window. Every morning, Elia Martell woke up, felt of her still-beating heart, smelled the lemons, and smiled.

It wasn’t hard to be happy here, where the red sands reached to the still sea and the grapevines and orange trees scented the heavy summer air. It wasn’t hard to love the people of Dorne.

By rights, she should be miserable, she knew. _Unbedded, unwanted, unwed_ , the cruel whispers sometimes went in mockery of House Nymeros Martell’s words. Young Elia had flowered, reached marriageable age and passed it, never wedding and never bedding. Oberyn cut down every knight age twelve to eighty whom he heard with the chant on his lips. But it didn’t matter to Elia. The smell of lemons mattered to Elia. The children in the pools mattered. The love of her brothers and her brothers’ children mattered. 

She laughed when she thought of some brute rutting between her legs, sweating and sputtering. She was supposed to mourn for _that_? She was lucky to be alive.

Luck had followed Elia through her life, she insisted, though Doran in his dour moods insisted otherwise. 

“Look at it this way, brother,” she had told him, with her black eyes looking into his worried ones. “I was meant to die before I ever came out of our mother’s womb. They told you that, I know.”

“Yes, and how is that lucky—”

“You are not a stupid man,” Elia laughed. “But sometimes I think you’d go to the ends of the world to borrow trouble. I did live, did I not?”

“Barely.”

Elia looked around her. Her skin felt as though it was sparkling in the sun and the last of the dew. “ _Barely_ , you call it? Yes, I have been ill and I will be ill again. I will never be as strong as Mother, or even Oberyn’s daughters. Obara is a force to be reckoned with and the rest seem to follow her down the same path.”

“And Oberyn’s paramour pregnant with her first,” Doran murmured. “I speak to him of wedding Ellaria and he laughs in my face. It seems neither one of you will obey your brother in the matter of marriage.”

“Or very much else, I’m afraid.” 

“And my daughter is on the same path,” said Doran, pulling a face that was equal parts despair and amusement. “Nine years old and has to have everything her own way or she sets up a howl. My Quentyn adores her but he fears her in her wrath.”

“Oberyn and I were the same growing up,” Elia reminded him. “Arianne and Quentyn will be fine, brother. The love of a Dornish family can’t be sundered by fire in the blood.”

Elia left Doran, she hoped somewhat comforted, and made her way back to Oberyn, Ellaria, and her four nieces. _Sand Snakes_ she’d heard them called, and she knew Obara and Nymeria, at least, wore the badge with pride. Not even fifteen years old, they were already raising the seven hells. But what else could they do, agreed Elia and the whole of Dorne, with a father like theirs? 

“And how is our brother?” asked Oberyn after kissing Elia on both cheeks and her thin lips.

“Still hoping one or the other of us will wed, among other worries,” she answered. “I cannot speak for you and Ellaria, but as for me…”

“You would rather flee to Asshai, yes. You told me that two days ago,” Oberyn laughed. “Or was it Castle Black?”

“Either would do.” The mention of the North sent a shudder through Elia as even the thought of the shadowy city of Essos couldn’t. “Imagine if I had wed Jaime Lannister. He would drag me off to the far reaches of the kingdom, I know it. Those Northern Westerosi can never stay in one place.”

Oberyn laughed loudly. “You call Lannister ‘Northern’ as though he were born at Winterfell.”

“It’s all the same to me,” insisted Elia. “It’s cold, and it’s rough, and it’s not my home.”

“Don’t you ever want to see anywhere else in the world?”

“And leave here?” Sometimes, Elia thought Oberyn had honestly taken leave of his senses. “Never.”

Dorne was sand and sea, land and sky, sunsets that lasted hours and desert breezes that rocked its lithe, tan children to sleep. Dorne was the hazy silhouette of mountains to the north and west. Dorne was the silky scent of olive oil and the fingertip stains of blood oranges. Outside Dorne, Elia would die — she knew that for a certainty. And no royal marriage would save her.

She had come very close once, terrifyingly close. Her own mother had nearly given her away to a Targaryen prince, silver of hair and purple of eye.

“Surely you can’t find anything to mind about _that_ look,” her mother had needled her. “In the dark, you can imagine he’s Ser Arthur Dayne.” Elia winced at the barb, but stood silent and firm. Soon after, Rhaegar Targaryen had slipped away and married a Stark sister, saving Elia from what she only imagined would be a short, brutal marriage and a lingering death. She couldn’t trust a Targaryen with her heart or her body — hadn’t they always been mad? And Rhaegar, always singing dirges, while the Sword of the Morning sang lustily over his breakfast ale and even sang as he swapped off his enemies’ heads, so they said. Rhaegar was the only one to defeat him in tourney, but Elia had her suspicions that Arthur Dayne had let the silver prince win.

All that was in the past now. Elia was thirty, well past the age of having to contend with suitors. For one thing, Oberyn had driven most of them away. Elia was sure he knew, as well as she herself did, that marriage and all that went with it would kill her. Her place was in her brother’s home, helping to teach some patience and composure to those incorrigible children.

Ellaria, swollen with child, came to see her in her rooms one day as she lay abed late, listening to the change of the waves and the wind. 

“Sister,” Ellaria said, as they greeted each other, embracing. “It won’t be long now.” She patted her stomach. “Of course, it will be a girl — and we will name her for you.”

Elia’s heart thumped in her chest, and she smiled so widely it was almost painful. Tears pricked her eyes. Then she straightened and Ellaria on her rosy cheeks.

“We hope she’ll be as serene as her namesake,” Ellaria said, laughing. But with the father they had, both women knew the chances of that were slim.

Four wild girls with another on the way. It was lucky, indeed, she was here.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [theelusiveflamingo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theelusiveflamingo/pseuds/theelusiveflamingo) for the brainstorming!


End file.
